…and middle school, and elementary school….
Over at Rick Jones’ Curmudgeon Central, the final nominees for his not-so-coveted 2013 Curmie Award are up, and the winner will be determined by the vote of Rick’s readers. The Curmies memorialize the worst in U.S. conduct by education professionals, and a revoltingly diverse group of miscreants he has assembled. I urge you all to drop by, read Rick’s commentary (and about some of the awful incidents that didn’t make the cut), and vote.
Only three of Rick’s final eight were covered on Ethics Alarms, and while I am confident that the ultimate winner is among them, I am now second guessing my editorial judgment. Rick’s blog is more education-centric than Ethics Alarms ( his work has filled the gap created when the excellent “No Tolerance” blog went down), but I’m trying to recall why I passed on the other six, particularly Alex Evans and his imaginary grenade, and the student suspended for disarming another student. I think I was getting so sick of post-Sandy Hook hysteria when the invisible grenade story came out that I just couldn’t write about another one just then. The other one…well, as Rick notes, there were some complicating factors, but I should have covered it. Luckily Rick Jones was on the case, and did his usual excellent job.
Here, with Rick’s descriptions and links to his commentary, are the nominees:
Principal Greer Phillips of PS 79 (the Horan School) in East Harlem for conducting a completely unannounced (to teachers, to the police…) lockdown drill less than a week after the horrors at Sandy Hook Elementary. In aggravation: outrageous timing and an incompetently run drill complete with contradictory instructions, but also the makeup of the student body (a high percentage of students with emotional or cognitive problems). In mitigation: I can’t think of a thing. [Ethics Alarms commentary here.]
Principal Valerie Lara-Black of Mary Blair Elementary School in Loveland, Colorado for suspending 2nd-grader Alex Evans for throwing an imaginary grenade into an equally imaginary box containing “something evil.” In aggravation: this is stupid behavior even if there’s something tangible. In mitigation: there’s probably some idiotic zero tolerance policy that purports to justify if not demand these flights of inanity.
Principal Tracey Perkins of Cypress Lake (FL) High School for suspending a 16-year-old student because he disarmed another student, a football player who was threatening a teammate with a loaded gun. You see, he was “involved in an incident in which a weapon was present.” In aggravation: apart from the sheer idiocy the charges, they were changed after the school started being (quite rightly) embarrassed by the publicity. In mitigation: it is possible that the boy was indeed uncooperative with the ensuing investigation.
Principal Carla Scuzzarella of North Andover (MA) High School for stripping Erin Cox from her volleyball team captaincy and suspending her for five games because she went by a party where there was alcohol long enough to drive a drunken friend home. In aggravation: the police statement makes it clear that Ms. Cox had not been drinking, and the policy manual makes a specific point about the folly of guilt by association. In mitigation: there are reports that she was at the party longer than it would have taken just to collect her friend.
Officials at Dietrich (ID) High School for reporting science teacher Tim McDaniel to the school board and the state professional standards commission, allegedly for using the word “vagina.” Yes, in a biology class. In aggravation: Mr. McDaniel seems to be being penalized for the precise reason that he was doing his job. In mitigation: it is unclear to what extent the school per se was responsible for the brouhaha, although they clearly did little to prevent it.
Batavia (IL) High School and their equally incompetent school board for punishing social studies teacher John Dryden. His crime? Reminding his students of their 5th amendment rights while distributing a survey that could indeed have led to self-incrimination. In aggravation: the survey, with students’ name on it, was a clear invasion of student privacy, motivated by the usual nannyish hogwash. In mitigation: Dryden did react without checking with school officials about the intents of the survey. [Ethics Alarms commentary here.]
The unnamed teacher at Boles Junior High in Arlington, Texas for pouring pencil shavings into the mouth of 8th-grader Marquis Jay, and to the authorities who cravenly gave her a slap on the wrist. In aggravation: you need aggravation??? In mitigation: the boy deserved some punishment—he was at best inattentive—and it seems to have been an unpremeditated and isolated incident. [Ethics Alarms commentary here.]
Principal John Hynes of Grace Brethren High School in Simi Valley, California for the completely unauthorized action of changing the grades of at least one student (possibly several, including his own daughter), and the spineless board who allowed him get by with little punishment. In aggravation: it’s a short step from what has been admitted to and what has been alleged, which would be an outrageous abuse of power. In mitigation: with the exception of the one case, the allegations come almost exclusively from a now-former teacher. This may not be the most objective of sources.
Ethics Alarms 
I voted for… Principal Valerie Lara-Black of Mary Blair Elementary School in Loveland, Colorado. Of the eight nominees, Lara-Black has (so far) garnered only 15% of the votes cast. If I hadn’t read Curmie’s considerations I would have voted differently, but when I read his admonition that, “…the award is not for the most egregious act, but the one that shows the profession in the worst light. That is, a thoroughly heinous but isolated act shouldn’t necessarily get your vote over a less outrageous action that might be seen as either an exemplar of a systemic problem or a harbinger of bad things to come.”
Imaginary grenade? imaginary box? “something evil”? Now, what was it that Einstein said?
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
Well put fattymoon. I might add that without first having imagination knowledge could never occur; it is the foundation of all that we know.
Is there any reason why K-12 education can not be done entirely online?
Not everyone has access to computers or internet?
There is no ability for true personal learning that way either. Individual, personal contact between student and teacher I think is essential
It would be cheaper to get internet access and computers to every child than the current system, especially if you factor in busing in rural areas. There are obvious problems with the idea, but none that couldn’t be solved if everyone were on board. Sadly, there isn’t as much money or power to be had by the current money/power interests so it probably won’t ever happen.
1) What is a painful indictment is the utter failure that public education is, in terms of dollars spent compared to results.
2) My grand-dad (born 1903) didn’t attend high school. Yet he was a comfortably successful convenience store proprietor, builder/owner/manager of 5 rental houses, as well as self-made landowner (not a lot of land) who rented his land out to grazers and tenant farmers.
We have similar backgrounds. My grandfather and father were ranchers. There is just no way to replace actually doing something. Our parent and grandparents had less formal education, but they had plenty of experience.
It seems the entire educational community is engaged in trying to eliminate actual experience and replace it with simulations and theory.
Computer based education wouldn’t solve that either though. I wonder if the answer is in schools being smaller and closer to home both in curriculum and in space. Home school or neighborhood school would be a good start. National standards just aren’t doing do the job.
I am a fan of decentralizing far more aspects of community than our current country’s attitude.
Far more can be solved with localized focus than can with broad reaching, centralize and isolated bureaucracy.
The answer, granny, is getting the idiotic unions OUT of the educational system and making teachers responsible for TEACHING again.
You’re preaching to the choir. I’m a teacher who went through a strike. Nothing would surprise me about the teacher’s unions.
Public sector unions, by their nature, create and exacerbate conflicts of interest. They also create tension between tax payers and civil employees.
Private sector unions? They served a historical purpose that once was valuable. Now? Debatable what good they perform other than siphon money into the salaries of union bosses and siphon money into the DNC.
Certainly workers have a freedom to associate, but their collusion to set the price of their goods and services creates the same market-stifling effect of a cartel*, which we consider illegal… Except when labor does it.
*(which is business owners colluding to set the price of goods and services)
I dual voted for Valerie Lara-black and Tracey Perkins. The first exemplified the end state of zero tolerance as a form of thought crime. I think Negative Tolerance seems like an apt phrase for stepping into the realm of the purely imaginary, and I may start using it regularly. The latter exemplified the mindless obedience of rules which is also so prevalent in zero tolerance policies. It was too bad Newlin Fell elementary was relegated to dishonorable mention or I would have voted for it as well. Zero tolerance idiocy is both incredibly common and incredibly stupid.
It’s a shame they can’t all lose this competition, but I’m glad he’s using approval voting for it so I could vote for more than one.
For what it’s worth: My vote was for the Principal who made my worst list for 2012. I cannot imaging doing anything more stupid and incompetent, not to mention cruel, than holding a fake Newtown-drill right after the massacre, without warning teachers. The No-Tolerance stuff is predictable and a matter of taste—imaginary grenade, or pizza gun? Or LEGO gun? Or finger gun? Or deaf child named “Gunner”? But this stunt was dangerous, cruel, and the apotheosis of the hysterical reaction of school administrators to Newtown.
The fact that you can’t imagine something worse speaks well of you.
Here’s something worse that you don’t have to imagine.
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2013/04/gunfire_and_moments_of_fear_as.html
How is that worse? The students weren’t there! I think the teacher exercise was cruel and idiotic, and someone should have sued, but the East Harlem High drill included students, and young ones. Infinitely worse in every way.
Oh…and in the East Harlem case, the students included many autistic and special needs kids. Who were in utter terror. Bad enough for you?
I voted for the principal who had the post Newtown lockdown drill also. I haven’t seen a statement from the principal regarding the drill and I would really like to know why she felt that a drill at this time….not informing the teachers or the police…was a good idea.
The EA post about this is here.
I may have been influenced by FattyMoon’s comment, but I’ve also been getting frustrated by Zero Tolerance for a long time. The stupid drill feels more like a one time event to me.
Although in hindsight the school district’s administration is worthy of general indictment over doing absolutely nothing to punish Greer. She’s still listed as the prinicpal on the schools website. The education system’s general inability to hold it’s officials accountable for anything is a much more widespread issue.
I assumed, when she wasn’t ditched on the spot, that she was the beneficiary of a “well, she meant well” pass from people similarly semi-nuts over Newtown.
I voted for the imaginary grenade, as well. The fact that the child was punished for literally expressing a thought exemplifies the antithesis of education. Thought-crime is fast approaching a reality, and it’s particularly tragic that it begins in the schools, where we teach children TO think.
“where we teach children to think”
When and where did you go to school? That has often not been the goal of schools for the masses.
Then it was the inadvertent result, when teaching was competent. I was taught critical thinking in elementary school, public school, and onward. You don’t need school to learn facts.
I was going to vote for the 5th Amendment one, since the Constitution and the Bill of Rights has a special place in my heart.
But I will vote for the unannounced drill right after Sandy Hook as the prime offender. The impact is substantially worse and to more individuals and is based off of a completely “ARE YOU STUPID?! Do you have to think to breath?!” decision?
I voted for the 5th Amendment one. My reasoning was that the teacher was doing his small bit to try to help cut the head off of the snake. He found, of course, that snakes don’t much like having their heads cut off…
The Erin Cox story should be removed. She handled her court summons and has moved on. Let’s just say the school knew the real story, which was different from the one the attorney, Wendy Murphy states for her client.
Yeah, the girl was drinking.
Let Curmie know. I have no post about it on Ethics Alarms.
The local link
http://valleypatriot.com/erin-cox-confesses-to-drinking-at-underage-party-that-gained-national-attention-the-history-of-a-bogus-media-story-that-never-happened/
Thanks, I’ll write a post on this. I didn’t cover the original story.